Black Hole
"This is impossible," Altin whispered. He was scared.
The scene was so disturbing that it defied common sense. The "black hole" took the shape of a two-meters sphere of the darkest kind of black. It was the kind of black you would have in a closed 4-walls room with no window and no light. "That" should be impossible in an open space in broad daylight. The impossible-to-understand was scary.
Altin and Paul moved closer to the anomaly. Carefully, they came about 2 meters from the hole, which was about just the proper social distancing distance.
Paul slowly reached out with his hand to touch the dark hole...
"STOP! "
Altin shouted; he forcefully pulled Paul back.
"That could be dangerous! Don't pass your hand first..." He took a deep breath. "Look, let's try something first. I have a pen in my backpack." Altin got his breath under control.
"Yeah, OK, sorry, I wasn't careful." Paul apologized. He knew he had been a bit reckless; he just didn't consider the implications of touching it. He was a kid, after all!
"Go ahead, let's throw some stuff and see," Paul proposed.
Altin dropped his backpack to the ground. He opened it, pulling the zip of the main pocket. He grabbed a pen and... threw it toward the black hole.
The black hole was about two meters tall and two meters wide. Therefore, it was an easy target.
As the pen drew closer to the hole...
It suddenly disappeared.
Seconds passed.
But it didn't reappear on the other side. Furthermore, Altin and Paul didn't hear the pen fall either.
"Throw something else, maybe?" Paul suggested.
"OK, I'll sacrifice that apple." Altin often missed breakfast due to getting up late. So he often had a snack in his backpack when he was hungry.
Like now: he was hungry. Terribly hungry. But he still chose to sacrifice his apple. That was speaking for how far he was willing to go for this adventure.
He threw the apple.
It went through and didn't exit, just like the pen.
"It looks like whatever comes in doesn't exit," Altin observed. "I think we should leave; let's take a video and be done with it." He said. He had a bad feeling about this. What if one of them became trapped in the black hole?
"OK, OK, take a video. I just wanna try one last thing." Paul said while taking out a 30cm ruler from his backpack.
"Wooo woo, wait, are you sure you wanna get close to that thing?"Altin warned. He was starting to regret to have brought Paul there.
Paul replied casually, "Yeah," and walked to the black hole.
"Maybe grab me to pull me back just in case." He mentioned on second thought.
Altin moved behind Paul, holding Paul's left arm firmly, ready to pull.
Paul held his ruler on this right hand. Then, he slowly inserted the ruler inside the black hole.
There was neither resistance nor attraction. On the contrary, it felt as if he was inserting the ruler into thin air.
He continued inserting the ruler to its 20cm mark.
He stopped there. Closer than that, his hand would make contact with the black hole, which seemed a bit risky, even for the fearless Paul.
He then pulled the ruler.
Altin and Paul both stepped back. They looked at the ruler.
It was...
... just as usual. Nothing peculiar about it.
"So whatever comes in doesn't come out by the other side, but inserting and pulling something works. Maybe the black hole is larger "inside" as we thought it was?" Altin suggested.
"That sounds just about right," Paul said absent-mindedly.
They stared at the black hole in silence.
"Hey, what do you think of exploring inside? See the ruler? It looks safe." Paul proposed.
"No, let's let other people do it." Altin refused. "Don't go inside, please." He had an ominous feeling, the feeling that going inside would be very, very dangerous. He felt he needed to do everything to prevent Paul from attempting. "Let's go."
Paul sighed. He knew that Altin was not a risk-taker. Altin was even afraid of being punished for being late! Of course, Altin would be frightened by the unknown.
"Fine. But let me at least watch this for a while and record a video. I'll sit here for five minutes."
"Alright, but stay away from it." Altin was forced to compromise.
Paul sat and took out his phone. He started recording a video.
Altin didn't feel comfortable near the black hole. So he walked toward the closest wall hole, where a window would have been, to get a good bath of sunlight. That felt good. It helped him relax.
Two minutes passed without anything happening.
***
"Wai... HELP!!!"
Suddenly, a terrified scream rang. Then nothing.
Altin immediately turned around.
The black hole had doubled in size.
It had grown from 2m wide to 4m wide and tall, even going through the floor and the ceiling.
Paul was missing.
The scream was his.
"Oh no..." Altin thought of a thousand things all in the same second, but all that amounted only to a silent curse. He felt rising despair.
"Oh no...." He repeated to himself.
"PAUL! DO YOU HEAR ME?" He screamed at the top of his lung. "DO YOU HEAR ME? SAY SOMETHING?"
Silence.
"PAUL!!! THAT'S NOT FUNNY. SAY SOMETHING!" Altin repeated.
"PAUL!!!" Altin became desperate.
Five minutes passed, during which Altin kept screaming. But Paul still didn't come out, neither did the black hole grew again.
"What should I do..." Altin considered, still panicked.
"I can leave and report to the police."
"But how long will it take until they arrive? What if something happens to Paul? What if the hole grows again?"
Tap. Tap. Tap. Altin was nervously tapping his foot on the ground and scratching his head. All at the same time: he was extremely nervous.
He suddenly remembered his dream that Saturday when he had discovered that the anomalies were happening everywhere. Now he realized Paul had been in his dream. And he had been captured by darkness. Altin didn't believe that dreams could tell the future, but he believed in intuition: maybe he had subconsciously understood that such a day risked happening. Why and how? He had no idea. But to him, it didn't matter. What mattered was that his guts told him to act now, or he would lose a friend forever.
Forever.
That hit him.
Paul and Altin were two oddballs when they met during 6th grade. Altin was a lonely child, not very good at communicating. Thankfully, he attracted sympathy from those around him, especially adults. As a result, the other kids didn't bully him too much.
Paul was different but comparable: he was an oddball for other reasons. Paul had very early refused to stick to the norms. He was late in class, skipped homework, dressed with no care and in unmatching clothes, and was fond of the weirdness. He didn't fit well in school, so he, too, was isolated. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that the two had been assigned in the same dorm room. It could be that the school director had known about them and thus gave them each other as friends.
Altin, François, Paul, and Julien had met together in this dorm.
They didn't get along right away. But, nevertheless, they slowly chose to stick together. This way, things will be less lonely. Julien, the "geek," and François, the "muscle," were less lonely than Paul and Altin, but they too joined the band for the sense of belonging it gave them.
Altin decided he couldn't give up on Paul.
When he imagined losing him, he realized he would regret it for his whole life.
"I will go. Right now. I have to. I have to." He repeated to himself.
He was scared to death. He wasn't sure he would make it out alive. But he had to try.
"It is so dark. I won't be able to escape once I enter".
This little thought kept hitting him.
Even though he had to try, he could play it smart.
"I need something long than I can use to connect from here to the black hole, like the ruler, but longer."
He removed his blue gyms.
And then his pullover.
Oooooooooooooooowhoo!!
The cold winter wind struck Altin's bare skin. It was freezing. It was the last day of January: January 31st, 2026.
It had been a bit more than a month since the ball anomaly and a week since the teacher and hammer anomalies. Time seemed to pass so fast.
Altin was cold to the point he didn't know whether he was colder of fear or weather.
Despite feeling so cold, he was sweating.
He took his pants and pullover and linked them by making a rudimentary knot using the pants' legs and the arms of the pullover. Thus, it became a "rope of clothes." Then, he linked the rope to its backpack. The backpack, heavy with books and a laptop, was attached to this rope of clothes on the ground. The length of this "rope" was about 130cm.
He placed the backpack 1m away from the black hole.
He then held the rope in one hand.
And slowly...
Slowly...
Got closer to the black hole.
The black hole grew larger and larger in the eyes of Altin.
He stopped right in front of it.
He looked behind: the rope was still well in his hands, and his backpack was far enough.
"Whatever happens, I can use the rope to feel which way to go back, right?" Altin thought.
He took a deep breath.
He stepped inside.
---
Black.
Black everywhere. Not a single source of light.
Altin saw nothing, or rather, he saw nothing but darkness. The sight was terrifying.
He looked at his arm holding the rope.
He didn't see his arm. However, he still felt the rope.
Fighting against the coldness pervading his heart and skin, Altin wondered, "Can I go back the way I came by following the rope?"
Altin very gently pulled the rope. This way, he could feel the direction to which going, as his backpack was sufficiently heavy to not move by a gentle pull.
Surprisingly, the direction didn't match the direction he came from!
He had walked straight into the black hole.
However, the rope seemed to come from his right, not behind him!
Altin swallowed his saliva. He understood that finding his way without the rope would be very, very hard.
He walked in the direction of the rope.
Two seconds later.
He saw the light again.
He saw hope.
Hope that he could go back whenever he wanted, thanks to the rope linking him to the real space.
He breathed.
That felt good.
And came back inside the darkness.
There, he realized, he could also breathe as usual, and it was just as cold as outside. The only difference was that there was no light. Also, the directions seemed different. It was as if he had entered a vaster, dark world.
Altin managed to calm down.
He listened.
He heard...
…crying.
Someone was crying.
It was Paul.
"PAUL!!! DO YOU HEAR ME? PAUL!!!" Altin shouted.
"Altin? ALTIN ?! Where are you?" Paul shouted back.
"Here! Follow my voice. Come as fast as you can. HERE!!!" Altin replied.
"OK OK OK OK, don't move. I'm coming. Keep shouting." Paul said.
Altin kept shouting "Here!" as loudly as he could.
And soon... he felt somebody grasping him by the shoulder.
"Altin! It's me! Paul! You're here?"
"Oh my gosh !! You made it... Paul! I'm so happy to hear your voice." Altin exclaimed.
"I thought I would never escape. I tried to walk everywhere, but I never found a way out. Oh, but wait. Are you naked?" Paul said.
Altin was rightly without any top nor pants. He explained: "I removed my clothes to make a rope of them, hold my left hand, OK? I'll use the rope to find the right direction." Altin asked.
"OK. " Paul didn't say much. Now that he had some hope he would get out, he felt so much better that he felt like crying.
On that, Altin gently pulled the rope again. He again felt something. He did two careful steps toward the direction of the pull. One step... two steps... but still, he was in the darkness.
"Weird." Coldness was creeping on his neck.
He did two more slow steps.
He reached the end of the rope.
He lowered.
He felt the backpack.
The sudden realization that the black hole must have grown again came to him.
They were trapped.
Where did the exit move?